Community Engagement Core

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE ABSTRACT The Community Engagement Core (CEC) is central to the successful dissemination of findings from the research projects in this MADRES Center for Environmental Health Disparities (“MADRES Center”), and to incorporating community knowledge that may be informative for the research process. The CEC will serve as a bridge between the MADRES Center and relevant stakeholders, including those concerned about eliminating racial/ethnic disparities in obesity, focused on young children and pregnant women. Key partners include nonprofit organizations focused on children's health, youth leadership development, and environmental justice, as well as the County health department. The four selected target areas—Boyle Heights, City of Commerce, City Terrace and East Los Angeles—were all chosen for their significant environmental health disparities. The CEC will develop a culturally-appropriate dissemination plan for sharing scientific knowledge, including through the use of social media and visually informative graphics (“infographics”), targeted to these four communities in Los Angeles. The CEC will also develop programs for pregnant women, new mothers, and area residents concerned about issues affecting 0-5 age children to strengthen their environmental health literacy around environmental health disparities and contaminants that may impact their health or the health of their babies. The CEC will develop innovative training efforts for youth to raise youth environmental health literacy about the impacts of environmental contaminants in their communities, using community mapping exercises and trainings on community-based research for participants to explore data about their community and the surrounding built environment. Finally, the CEC will identify possible interventions with the community partners for future implementation. For some of our activities we plan to use pre-and post-tests. These will be anonymous and will allow us to see changes in knowledge before and after our training sessions and workshops.